


Silver Nemesis Coda: Reflections

by DBC_82



Series: Silver Nemesis Coda [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Classic Doctor Who References, Classic Who Companions Are Awesome, Closure, Coda, Gen, Post-Reflections, Serial: s150 Silver Nemesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29844939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DBC_82/pseuds/DBC_82
Summary: The Doctor and Ace take a moment following their battle with the Cybermen to regroup, without knowing that further danger is already on the horizon.Part 1 of 4. To be continued!
Relationships: Seventh Doctor & Ace McShane
Series: Silver Nemesis Coda [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2194128





	Silver Nemesis Coda: Reflections

Ace stared into the calm, mirrored surface of the water and tried to see whatever it was the Doctor found so absorbing. The pond was concealed within a copse of high trees in full foliage, nestled in the side of a gentle hill. It was a warm summers day, the air was still and smelled of dry earth and grass. She closed her eyes and listened for the sound of traffic, planes or other airborne craft overhead but she heard nothing, only the occasional birdsong and distant sound of cattle. It reminded her of August bank holidays, barbecues and ice cream.  
The Doctor was by her side as always, sat on his haunches wearing an inscrutable frown. After taking a moment to reflect on their surroundings and relax into the moment Ace decided she was bored.  
'What is it we're doing here again Professor?' she asked.  
'Recalibrating,' he said flatly in response.  
'Recalibrating what? You or the TARDIS?'  
'Both!'  
'Oh come on!' she exclaimed, 'Why are we here?'  
He turned his gaze away from the water and stood to face her with a steely gaze.  
Now I'm for it, she thought.  
'We're here because I was hoping to reflect on the larger mysteries of the universe and _someone_ described the Eye of Orion as “a wet weekend in Wales.” If you're not able to keep yourself adequately entertained I suggest you go back to the TARDIS.'  
Ace sighed and kicked at the dry red clay with the toe of her boot while the Doctor sat back down and returned to whatever it was he was contemplating.  
It had been a funny sort of a day so far. Perhaps it was a Monday, she'd never got on particularly well with Mondays. Even before she spent her days saving the world and getting shot at, back when she'd been plain old Dorothy McShane, anyone who knew her knew that it was best just to leave her alone on a Monday. Not that the days of the week had any real meaning when it came to life onboard the TARDIS, the only real constant was the soft white glow of the roundels and the grinding of ancient engines as they landed in some strange new place.  
Most recently they'd been in Windsor in what Ace assumed would have been her relative present had she not been whisked away at the tender age of sixteen to a freezer centre at the arse end of the universe. Over the course of a day that had started with jazz in the sunshine they'd stumbled upon yet another ancient Gallifreyean superweapon that just so happened to have been left lying about before scuppering the plans of a nasty bunch of silver aliens called the Cybermen.  
Ace gathered that the metal giants had something of a history with the Doctor, he certainly didn't seem all that surprised when they turned up and even less surprised when he single-handedly destroyed their entire fleet. If he had been expecting to defeat them then she couldn't help but wonder how exactly she'd ended up doing battle with an entire Cyber assault squad armed only with a catapult and some gold coins but that was a question she was saving for a rainy day. Ace got that the Doctor played his cards close to his chest but she'd never been very good at Poker and the whole magician's assistant act was starting to grate. She was Ace and nobody's Debbie McGee. Still when the whole question of the Doctor's identity had come up she'd been as collected as could be expected. Not that she wanted to give that Peinforte bitch the satisfaction anyway but what did it matter to her? He was her best friend, and the Doctor wouldn't be the Doctor if it turned out he was just an intergalactic version of Mr Benn. Of course she'd still asked him afterwards because how could she help but wonder but he'd been as enigmatic as always and his behaviour on what was probably almost definitely a Monday didn't help matters.  
After Windsor in what she still thought of as _her_ time they'd dropped off Lady Peinforte's hired muscle in the Seventeenth century. As pleased as Richard seemed to be to be back home she couldn't help but remember that he'd murdered the mathematician in cold blood and while they sat and enjoyed his hospitality she eyed him warily, eager for them to be on their way. Plus she'd had enough of the lute to last her a lifetime.  
'I never thought I'd say this Professor but I think I'll stick with the jazz.'  
'Wonders never cease.'  
At the sudden insistence of a shrieking alarm from his inside jacket pocket the Doctor produced something that was almost certainly not a fob watch and frowned.  
'Time to be off.'  
'Another world need saving?' Ace asked, remembering how their day had started.  
'Worse,' he said with mock severity. 'I left a sponge cake in the oven.'  
Pocketing her sunglasses and collecting her things she cast a backward glance at the chessboard, the ornately sculptured form of the Doctor's White King lying toppled and forgotten behind them.  
'Shouldn't we say goodbye?'  
'No time Ace,' he called back over his shoulder as he unlocked the TARDIS and stepped inside.  
She crossed the threshold after him, feeling the same imperceptible change in temperature, air pressure and ambient noise that she'd come to associate with entering the Doctor's bewilderingly complex space time machine. Her friend was already at the controls, flipping the switch that triggered their dematerialisation.  
'So where to next?' he asked.  
'Don't mind. Are there really no lose ends to tie up after all that business?'  
'Such as?'  
'Oh I dunno,' Ace said, 'Asteroids crashing into Windsor or alien spaceships and Time-travelling homicidal Elizabethan aristocrats turning up unannounced? You know, stuff like that tends to get noticed.'  
'Stuart,' he corrected her.  
'Huh?'  
'Not Elizabethan, Stuart!'  
'Who's he when he's at home?'  
'Have you no grasp of history?' he said dancing around the console.  
'Professor we live onboard a time machine!' she said following him.  
'That's no excuse for ignorance,' he reprimanded her.  
'Fine, you win.'  
The Doctor stopped walking. 'Of course I do. Anyway, I think perhaps a change of scenery would be useful at this juncture,' he said, and set the controls on a new path.  
While they were inflight Ace took the opportunity to shower in one of the TARDIS's many bathrooms while the Doctor did whatever it was he usually did when he was offstage. Perhaps he didn't even exist when there wasn't a planet to save or an enemy to defeat? Without knowing their destination she'd dressed simply and met him in the control room for their aborted trip to the Eye of Orion where it had rained solidly for the whole half hour they spent there. After drying off again they made another brief hop and arrived in a field of long grass on what she'd assumed was Earth.  
'Talk about green and pleasant,' she said, trying to lighten the mood.  
The Doctor remained uncommunicative but navigated a course with his umbrella held perpendicular to the horizon. They'd walked until they encountered a well-trodden path through the undergrowth that led to the pond, at which point the Time Lord had retreated into himself and Ace was left to her own devices.  
After her unsuccessful attempt to engage him in conversation she decided to explore instead. Through a gap in the trees she could just about where see the TARDIS had landed, cementing itself into being in the clay based earth as though it had always been there, a mathematical construct presenting itself as a fact of reality. It was a blue box nestled in the long grass of a gentle incline, the workings of which she couldn't even begin to fathom. It was also her home now, which was a bit strange given the minute they opened the doors normally spelled trouble. It was good though, it felt safe in a way she'd always suspected home could feel like but had never really understood. The Doctor felt like home too, despite all his gripes and his constant attempts to educate her. He was well safe, and not like a parent or a teacher; he was her friend, her best friend and only on occasion was he a grumpy old git. Sadly this seemed to be one of those occasions.  
She wandered back to the pond to find the Doctor still perched on the dusty shore, gazing into the murky depths. There really wasn't much else to be done when the Doctor was being magnanimous other than wait for it to pass or ask the right question. Ace decided to try the latter.  
'So tell me about the Cybermen,' she said.  
She watched the Doctor come back to life, standing slowly he stretched his legs and planted his umbrella firmly in the mud. 'Why don't you tell me?'  
'A race of cybernetic aliens I'd guess, hence the name. Bit obvious to be honest. People who turned themselves into machines and decided to invade the galaxy?'  
'Correct, thoughn not machines exactly, cybernetically augmented humanoids, and not all of them turned voluntarily. The Cybermen have a habit of converting people against their will. Very nasty.'  
She grimaced at the prospect. 'They sound well evil.'  
'They are.' he said before falling silent. She wondered what horrors he was remembering as he stared into the distance.  
'What's happened to them?' she asked.  
'Gone,' he said definitively. 'Those that survived have retreated to lick their cybernetically augmented wounds on Telos or Planet 14, or possibly at the fringes of the Oort cloud. I forget where exactly though I'm sure I've dealt with them already.'  
'You're very confident,' she said.  
'Pah, Cybermen! They're like ants at a picnic, only less eloquent, more tedious and entirely predictable.'  
Ace pondered their experiences on Shoreditch in the nineteen sixties only a couple of months before. 'So no immediate plans to blow up their home planet then?'  
'Oh I did that aeons ago. All their own fault of course. Hubris and greed will always be the downfall of the megalomaniacal.'  
'So they're done for?'  
'Not exactly,' he said, adjusting his hat. 'They'll continue wreaking havoc on the universe, waging wars and seeking to subjugate and convert all sentient life for millennia, wandering the cosmos like so many other lost souls seeking to destroy exactly that which they envy the most.'  
'Which is?'  
'Autonomy, individuality, hope, love, freedom. They destroy what they cannot abide, making everything they encounter like them. Uniform, sleek... soulless. They are abhorrent.'  
Ace frowned, 'So why not end just stop them now while you have the chance then?'  
'Because, because, because! Because the web of time is fragile and the threat of the Cybermen has a positive effect on future generations. Yes they spend the next several hundred thousand years evolving into the Imperial CyberHost, a galaxy spanning empire of malevolent self-replicating nanotechnology, but after untold millennia they eventually become a benevolent political power that ultimately unites the galaxy in peace. And because of the knowledge of all these future eventualities all I can ever maybe hope for as a Time Lord is nudge history in the right direction and hope for the best...'  
The Doctor abruptly stopped his explanation to poke around in the undergrowth with his umbrella, expertly imitating the sound of a calling bird. He wasn't comfortable with explanations at the best of times but she could always see right through his attempts to distract her. He'd obviously tired of discussing the Cybermen so Ace decided to try another tack, one closer to home.  
'Tell me about the Time Lords,' she asked eventually.  
The Doctor stopped moving instantly and placed his umbrella down on the ground, almost reverently. 'What's to tell? A more officious bunch of bureaucrats you're unlikely ever to meet.'  
'Space bureaucrats?' she asked hesitantly.  
'And time. A people so fearful and risk averse they hoarded the mysteries of the universe and hardwired life after death into their very DNA.'  
'What do you mean?'  
'I mean we are ancient and terrible. Also we change. When our bodies are old or injured a massive influx of energy rewrites a Time Lord's entire physical being, personae and consciousness included. The memory is all that survives.'  
Ace took a moment to consider what her friend was telling her,' So you've not always been you, there've been other people, other Doctors?'  
'But none with the same wit, flair or style as I have I hasten to add.'  
She stared at him with a sudden intensity, wondering about the friend that she thought she knew so well who suddenly seemed so strange and distant. How could she trust this funny little man if there was the chance she's wake up tomorrow and he'd be somebody else. Ace had decided long ago that she'd be there to watch the Doctor's back for as long as he needed her but what happened when the Doctor stopped being the Doctor? Above all the noise the same question repeatedly crossed her mind...  
'Have you always been Scottish?' she asked eventually.  
'No,' the Doctor said with a shy smile, ' I studied medicine at the University of Glasgow and I think the memory of my time at that hallowed institution became dislodged during my previous regeneration.'  
He rubbed his head at the memory and Ace frowned in uncertainty.  
'Regeneration,' she said hesitantly. 'Is that what it's called when you change? What were you like before?'  
'Colourful, in every sense of the word,' he said with a wry smile. 'Any other questions?'  
Oh, only everything, she thought to herself.  
'Yes, how did you get involved with the statue of Nemesis?'  
'By chance of course. Lady Peinforte made an enemy of the wrong band of roundheads.'  
'That doesn't tell me anything!' she said in exasperation. 'How did this all get started?'  
The Doctor knelt in front of the still waters of the pond again, his umbrella tip planted firmly in the mud and Ace was sure she was staring down the business end of one of the Doctor's rare explanations. She decided it best to get comfy and found a particularly sturdy tree to lean herself against, her arms folded resolutely.  
'Once upon a time when I was young and the universe was already very old... Or was it the other way around? I forget'  
'Professor! You're doing it again.'  
'Doing what?'  
'Prevaricating.'  
'Am I? I probably am.' The Doctor stood suddenly and gazed off into the middle distance. 'It's hard to tell when you've lived as long as I have. When you've seen galaxies form out of nothing more than dust and gas and watched supernovae-'  
'Oh Professor if you're just going to pontificate maybe I will go back to the TARDIS.'  
The Doctor smiled suddenly, one of those rare genuine smiles that broke like a shard of sunlight through a misty morning and Ace relaxed back into her tree.  
'Sorry.' he said. 'As I was saying, there was once a time when the universe was but a whisper of its former self and half the size to boot and all the secrets of the Time Lords were kept safely under lock and key. Well it was more of a quantum lock and a key that required a computer with more processing power than existed in the universe to open but you understand the principle.'  
Ace shrugged, 'So they were kept safe? All the dirty laundry the Time Lords didn't want escaping?'  
'Safe as tiny houses inside other houses kept safe inside the largest safe in the universe. Safe within safe within safe.'  
'Like those Russian dolls.'  
'Matryoshka.'  
'Bless you.'  
'Very droll.'  
Ace pondered the Doctor's words. 'You're talking about Validium aren't you? And the Hand of Omega?'  
The Doctor stared into the still surface of the pond in front of him and nodded slowly. 'The Hand of Omega was the catalyst in a plan that was centuries in the making. The Nemesis statue, as you came to know Validium as fell into the wrong hands, though in my haste to save the day I failed to ask a fundamental question..'  
Ace considered this for a moment. 'You said you launched the Validium into space from Lady Peinforte's estate.'  
'Correct.'  
'So how did it get there in the first place?'  
'Precisely,' the Doctor said as he clasped his hands together. 'In my haste to be rid of it I neglected to enquire as to how it came to reach Earth in the first place.'  
'So,' Ace began hesitantly, 'You're wondering how that came about as well as presumably being worried about what other Time Lords skeletons have escaped the closet?  
'And what the consequences will be.'  
'Consequences?'  
Instead of replying the Doctor picked up a large stone from somewhere and pitched it in a high arc into the middle of the pond. It landed with a satisfying splash and Ace watched the ripples from the impact rebounded outwards.  
'Alright Professor you've made your point.' Ace smiled, the Doctor could always be relied upon to illustrate his explanations, though he did have a tendency for the theatrical. 'Surely there isn't another devious Time Lord superweapon floating around Earth is there?'  
'Oh no, nothing like that,' he said fluttering his hand vaguely in her direction.  
'So us being here has no relation to any of what you've just told me? We're just here so you can figure out your next move?'  
'Of course.'  
Ace nodded sagely and stared into the ripples in the pond's surface.  
Obviously it was at this point that the Doctor cried out in pain and collapsed clutching his chest.


End file.
